I've been locked inside your heart shaped box for
by toolostforyou
Summary: Written for LJ ficathon. How does Will find out Mac was at Northwestern?


Will wasn't sure why he had agreed to be the one to go looking in Mac's office for the set of notes she had been discussing. It would have been easier to ask his assistant or anyone else who was sat around the conference room table. Except he could tell by the way that Mac was talking, she was about to lead into one of her speeches again. As much as he used to find it endearing when she would walk around his bedroom with nothing but his shirt on, ranting at him about other newscasts, he was unable to drag her onto the bed to silence her anymore. And now, they were reaching a level where he was thinking she was the one that needed to see a psychiatrist not him.

The main issue was finding the paper he was looking for on Mac's desk, like most things in her life, it looked organised at first glance, but when it came to sorting through, she had a system in place that only she could understand. Different notes for news stories and ideas were jumbled together, there was papers about Libya mixed in with profiles on the Republican Party candidates. Not what he was looking for.

He knew there was nothing really personal in with the papers, it had always been this way, other than their relationship she had attempted to keep personal affairs at home and work was allowed to reach the walls of her apartment if it was needed. But only if it was needed, too many times he had found her fast asleep at her desk as she had been ploughing her way through a story, ideas of who to book and sources.

His fingers flicked through sheets of paper, no longer caring if they weren't going back in their original place. Mac could deal with getting them back into the order she wanted them.

Will thought he had found the sheet she was on about when he found a yellow legal notepad which looked like it had an extra two sheets of paper that seemed like they didn't belong in the same pad. Trust Mac to put it at the back and as far away from the prying eye as anyone could see.

Pulling the sheets away, he couldn't help but pause when he saw the black marker against the paper. _'It's not'_, the words staring back at him, almost teasing him, to be sure that it wasn't just a coincidence.

'_But it can be'_.

To say that the wind got knocked out of him would be an understatement. He wanted to believe that it had been her but as the weeks went by and she never corrected him, his hope and belief that it had been Mackenzie died away. It was what he wanted to see. She was what he wanted to see sitting there, telling him that he could do what they always spoke about. The dream news report that told the truth and the facts rather than what was popular on that day. To educate the people and make them understand who it is they're voting for.

"Will, what's taking you…"

Will looked up at Mackenzie as she walked through the door, he couldn't help but smile at the somewhat look of horror on her face over what he had found. He could tell that her mind was working, the wheels turning in her head as she tried to formulate something to say.

"That was you sitting there?" Mackenzie just nodded in reply, taking a step forward so the door could close behind her, not wanting to let the staff be privy to the conversation or where it could go. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to, once you brought it up after the BP spill. But, I changed my mind. I decided to keep it until you got cold feet about ratings and hope that it caused you to change your mind. Or in case you decided to fire me when one of my weeks was up."

"I thought I was going crazy, I still think I wasn't one hundred percent there that night. Why did you do it?"

"I had came back and I… I'm actually not sure. But I was back here, struggling to find a job and I was hoping it would inspire you to change Newsnight into what was talked about. A real news programme, being on the cutting edge of what is important and not where Michelle Obama had bought her dress from."

Will looked at her, there were moments when he couldn't help but just take her in, his eyes roam over a single feature, and then it was used at times to confirm that she was back in New York and not in the middle of a war zone.

"I couldn't find the piece of paper." End of discussion, talking about it any more was going to open up new wounds, it was going to hurt and the conversation topic wasn't something to be shared in the middle of a work day when they had 4 hours until broadcast.

"It's right here." Mackenzie walked up to her desk, pushed a few papers around and picked up the sheet straight away, making it look like it was right on top the whole time. Actually, there was a chance it could have been, when he hit the desk straight away he was interested in what this search could lead to until he released a few sheets down it was nothing.

"I'm going to get back before Neal turns into Fox Mulder and attempts to make everyone believe that vampires are real." She had picked up that Will didn't want to talk about them anymore, and she understood it was something that he needed to digest.

Will let her leave at the room, his attention slowly turning to the legal pad that was in his hands. Did he leave his here or did he take it with him?

Ripping off the back sheet, he took the 'it can be' and placed it in the top draw of his desk. A reminder that they could do what they always wanted to.


End file.
